Maker of Optical Disk Drives to Move to S.D.
Optotech, a closely held Colorado manufacturer of optical disk drives that recently hired a prominent San Diegan as chairman and chief executive, announced it is moving its headquarters and manufacturing operations to San Diego this fall.
In April, Optotech named former Cipher Data Products chairman Don Muller, 54, to lead the company. Muller had been Cipher Data chairman since 1979 and had resigned as the company’s chief executive in January, 1987.
Based in Colorado Springs, Optotech also announced Monday that is selling its current optical disk drive product line to Shugart Corp. of Irvine. Terms of the sale were not disclosed.
Of Optotech’s remaining 40 employees, about a dozen will move to San Diego. The rest, mainly research staff and engineers, will stay in Colorado Springs, Muller said. Optotech is looking, he said, for a San Diego facility with more than 25,000 square feet. Muller would not project how much Optotech’s payroll might grow over the next year.
Founded in 1984, Optotech was the first company to sell a 5.25-inch optical disk drive, a kind of computer data storage device. Using laser technology, the optical disk product was capable of storing 200 megabytes of data, many times more than that stored on many comparably sized magnetic disks.
Optotech suffered, however, from a crowded field of competitors and vice president Larry Hemmerich said Monday that the company’s revenues have failed to grow past $5 million. Rather than stick with the existing product line, Muller decided to sell it and focus on developing new products.
Muller declined to describe the new products, saying only that several will be introduced later this year. It would not be “unreasonable” to expect that the new Optotech products will include an “erasable” optical disk drive, or one that can be repeatedly recorded on, much like magnetic disks. Although several eraseable disk drives have been announced, none have reached the market.
Muller oversaw the growth of Cipher Data sales from less than $1 million to more than $170 million during his nine-year tenure as chairman.
